Thursday, January 10, 2013

Court upholds decision to keep wolves out of US park

Published January 09, 2013

Associated Press

DENVER – A federal appeals court
is upholding the National Park Service's decision not to reintroduce
wolves to Rocky Mountain National Park to control the elk population.
WildEarth Guardians had argued that the Park Service violated
environmental laws when it ruled out using wolves and when it decided to
use trained volunteers to help Park Service employees shoot and kill
excess elk.
A federal judge in 2011 ruled that the agency took a hard look at
relevant data before concluding that reintroducing wolves wasn't a
feasible option and that volunteers' shooting the elk to limit the
population wasn't the same as hunting, which involves shooting for food
or sport. Hunting is generally banned within the park.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judge's ruling.

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

.

.

Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

.

“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone